Hunting for Mexico's mass graves with machine learning

Over the last decade, Mexican drug cartels have been fighting each other--and corrupt police and military units--for control of the lucrative drug trade, plunging the country into chaos. Outsiders might think of Mexico as sunny and tequila-soaked, but beyond the beach resorts of Cancun and Mazatlan there hides a grimmer tale: levels of murder, rape, and kidnapping are hitting levels rarely seen outside hotspots in Africa, Asia, and South America. So grim the tale, when 43 college students went missing in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero in 2014, investigators found 129 other bodies in 60 fosas clandestinas (mass graves) before stumbling on badly burned remains in a mass grave they think might--possibly, maybe--contain what's left of the missing students. Mexico's attorney general says the local mayor conspired with the town's police force to abduct the students and turn them over to a local gang, who murdered them and burned the bodies, and dumped the charred corpses into a river. The situation is so bad that, after six decades of gains, the average life expectancy in Mexico has decreased, according to recent research.